Seagate employees in Cupertino and Oklahoma City are taking a stand against hunger in their communities.
The Oklahoma City team recently completed a food drive in support of the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, while several employees from Seagate’s branded products group spent an afternoon helping out at a Second Harvest Food Bank facility in San Jose, California.
For a noble cause, not just a common cause
Ordinarily, senior VP Mark Whitby and his branded products team spend their time at work preparing for an upcoming product launch or meeting with key retail partners like Amazon or Best Buy. But in support of this effort, Whitby and several of his staff donned plastic gloves and sorted through bins of oranges, carefully checking for broken skins or signs of mold, before packing the fruit and loading them onto pallets for distribution to shelters, soup kitchens, and other local meal sites.
Patrick Connolly, VP for branded group innovation, said the activity helped drive “a different form of teamwork.”
“We’re all working for a noble cause here, not just a common cause,” Connolly explained. “Hunger, even in Silicon Valley, is all around us.”
“It’s an amazing feeling to work as a team and give back to others,” added Barbara Imbert, chief of staff for branded products. “You can really see the impact of your work pretty quickly, just watching those pallets stack up with boxes of fruit.”
Seagate’s branded products volunteers worked alongside another corporate team from Berkshire Communities; together, the teams packed 504 cases of oranges, totaling 12,600 pounds. Each volunteer packed an average of 630 pounds of fruit during a two-hour shift.
David Saxton, a volunteer coordinator with the Food Bank, said volunteers are always “deeply appreciated.” Volunteers contribute more than 300,000 hours of work each year with Second Harvest—the equivalent of 152 fulltime staff, he said.
“Over half of the food that’s sorted at our facility is done by volunteers,” Saxton said. “We get five to seven truckloads of fresh produce and other food each day. There’s no way we could get all that food sorted and distributed on time without volunteer help.”
Working to deliver more help to hungry families
Oklahoma City employees, meanwhile, exceeded their goals for their annual food drive. The team had set a goal of raising $7,500 and collecting 1,000 pounds of food for the Regional Food Bank. Employees ended up collecting a total of $13,762 and 1,250 pounds of food—which translates to the equivalent of some 68,800 meals for the hungry.
As in past years, the Oklahoma City site held a series of creative and fun activities to help their community. Over a three-week period, employees donated items for a silent auction, and participated in games such as a three-point basketball contest, a ping-pong tournament, closest-to-the-pin golf contest, and the ever-popular “pie in the face” contest, in which employees paid up for the opportunity to, yep, toss a pie in a manager’s face.
The theme for this year’s food drive was “Heroes Against Hunger,” and several OKC employees wore superhero-themed T-shirts or dressed up as their favorite caped crusader.
“We wanted to pull people in with some fun activities, which isn’t hard to do at our site,” said Jan Beauchamp, a senior IT engineer and a member of the site’s food drive committee. “Seagate has some pretty amazing people. We had a more compressed schedule this year for our food drive—three weeks instead of four—and we still blew past our goal. It really is a win for everyone involved.”
“This is always a big deal for our site, and everyone has a great time helping to make a difference,” added Lori Slentz, an administrative assistant and a fellow member of the food drive committee.
Over the last two years, Seagate’s Oklahoma City site has received special recognition from the Regional Food Bank for its generous contributions. Several employees also donate their time throughout the year as volunteers at the Food Bank.
With help from companies like Seagate, the Food Bank provides enough food to feed more than 110,000 hungry residents each week in Oklahoma.
